Vista - Disable aternate network connections (like WLAN,UMTS,etc) in LAN m

Hello all,

I searched several vista newsgroups but found nothing that helped me.
Because of the lack of hardware profiles I found no other way to disable
other network adapters when the LAN Adapter is active. The only information
I found was that vista uses the fastest network connection available for the
route (like "route info" shows with the metric values) and this makes sense.
But we dont want to allow our users to open other network connections when
they are connected to the LAN (means domain). For a matter of cost, security
etc. we dont want e.g. UMTS cards work in the LAN environment. Offline they
certainly shoud work.
Under XP we achieved this behaviour with hardware profiles but under Vista we
don't know how to do a similar thing. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance
Jens

Hardware profiles are still present if removed from user control. This means
you should have docked and undocked if applicable (ie they are laptops).

You can change the metric for a connection. That was it's purpose, to route
traffic on preferred routes, but if route blocked will use the others in
order of metric. At least that's the theory but MS has removed all Help
about it from Help. They were once nominal dollar amounts. So lowest cost to
highest cost if it still works. The programming docs imply they do (I can't
be bothered with this pathetic help anymore)

Routes and the Best Route
A route is a "network path" to a destination that has a certain cost
associated with it. The cost is represented by its administrative preference
and its protocol-specific metric. Routes with lower costs are preferred over
all other routes.


A route entry in the routing table includes:


A handle to the destination
The owner of this route
The neighbor (peer) that provided the route information
Flags associated with the state of the route
Flags associated with the route
The preference and metric for the route
The list of views to which the route belongs
Information that is private to the owner of the route
A list of next hops used to reach the destination
The following values, taken together, uniquely identify a route in the
routing table:


The destination network
The owner of the route
The neighbor who supplied the route

Metrics and Preference

Each route has an administrative preference (specified by the routing
policy), and a client-dependent metric. The routing table manager uses this
information to determine which route is the better route to a destination.
Routes with lower preference are better routes (one being lowest, and
therefore best). If two routes have the same preference, the route with the
lower metric is the better route.

Normally, the preference of a route is determined by the preference of the
client that added the route. However, for any routes added using the
Netsh.exe management tool, a preference value can be specified on a
per-route basis.

Preference is normally used to indicate priority between clients. For
example, an administrator can assign OSPF a lower (better) preference than
RIP. In this case, OSPF routes are preferable to RIP routes.




"Jens Schreiber" <JensSchreiber@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F3D6064D-142E-4DB4-80DC-50409B8519F2@microsoft.com...
> Hello all,
>
> I searched several vista newsgroups but found nothing that helped me.
> Because of the lack of hardware profiles I found no other way to disable
> other network adapters when the LAN Adapter is active. The only
> information
> I found was that vista uses the fastest network connection available for
> the
> route (like "route info" shows with the metric values) and this makes
> sense.
> But we dont want to allow our users to open other network connections when
> they are connected to the LAN (means domain). For a matter of cost,
> security
> etc. we dont want e.g. UMTS cards work in the LAN environment. Offline
> they
> certainly shoud work.
> Under XP we achieved this behaviour with hardware profiles but under Vista
> we
> don't know how to do a similar thing. Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks in advance
> Jens

Thanks for your description about how to change the preferred route, but that
is
not a solution for our problem.
We just want the user not to be able to use e.g. the UMTS card when
connected to
the LAN and I found still no solution!

You say the hardware profiles are still present but the only place where I
can see
this is under "services" -> "disable service for specified hardware
profile". When you
select a device in the device manager there is no option to enable/disable
this device
for a hardware profile. Even if this would be possible the problem is stil
that only one
hardware profile exist (yes they are laptops but without docking stations).

Thanks
Jens
"." wrote:

> Hardware profiles are still present if removed from user control. This means
> you should have docked and undocked if applicable (ie they are laptops).
>
> You can change the metric for a connection. That was it's purpose, to route
> traffic on preferred routes, but if route blocked will use the others in
> order of metric. At least that's the theory but MS has removed all Help
> about it from Help. They were once nominal dollar amounts. So lowest cost to
> highest cost if it still works. The programming docs imply they do (I can't
> be bothered with this pathetic help anymore)
> [snip]